Tis the Season!

I spent much of my teen years thinking about suicide. I don't really recall for what reason each time. I do know that each time it was because I felt that I had come against some peak that I could not overcome. Rather than rallying against it I felt better off dead. It was always because I felt there was something in this world that I deserved that I was being denied. And for all intents and purposes was never going to get. There was either something I fucked up, something someone else fucked up for me and of course it was forever so it seemed… And of course when these obstacles rear their ugly heads it seems that you are alone and lonely.
The very nature of feeling suicidal often leads down another lonely path. The question of mental illness what black person in their right mind would admit to or want to be known as being mentally ill. There are so many perceived character and physical weaknesses that blacks are considered predisposed to why would anyone add mental illness to the mix? More often than not we don’t we suffer silently afraid that we are crazy or soon to be crazy, because it is so taboo in the African American community to admit weakness and defeat we don’t even know various differences in mental health states. Case in point there is a difference in a major depressive episode that could be triggered by a traumatic event rather than a signal of infirmity. Further the perceived infirmity may just be a series of chemical imbalances easily remedied with diet and exercise. Being depressed enough to feel like dying is not the end of the world. Suicide is the final end.

I believe that European belief systems create the atmosphere for suicides. We mistakenly believe that if we don't have what we want it then we are better off dead. Perhaps we cannot easily decipher the difference between what we need and want because of the messages we receive through the media. May be it is just plain peer pressure. Keeping up with the Jones’ is a great stress that even the Jones’ themselves find hard to bear.

We have been taught all of our lives that in order to be successful we have to obtain certain things by certain times to be whole and productive. For example a woman living in the projects is deemed as an under-achiever or a pariah on society because she is absent money or social status. Her home is considered a place to strive to be away from. How many of us strive to achieve beyond all stress so that we can leave the stench and shame of our impoverished neighborhoods behind. Another even deeper question is how many of us get to destination suburbia and never give the sisters and brothers we leave in that cesspool a second thought while giving valuable tax dollars and business to the people who need it the least… But alas that is a different story that moves us away from the point. No one would actually celebrate the fact that she is able to take nothing and turn it into something. Noooo she would be pushed to do more because if she was truly worthy and valuable she would have more... Learning to embrace ourselves in whatever state or status is another key in combating depression and alas suicide.
Recently two famous black men committed suicide that really seemed to have it going on recording executive Shakira Stewart and actor De’Angelo Wilson. Both at what we feel is the pinnacle of success but something was still missing and it was missing enough for them to abandon all rational thinking and perhaps the lack of acceptance of ourselves is at root here as well. When you have everything and yet feel like you don’t have enough to live for, that says a lot in itself. What is fueling that emptiness and what will it take to leave the Europeans to embrace their culture and for us to embrace ours. Hell what does it take for us to even try and find our culture? My teen and early 20's suicidal preoccupation was thwarted by the belief that I would go to hell when I died and therefore be in a place worse than what I was FOREVER! Now at 39 I am in a new place and at a point of self-actualization. A new place of world realization... In part just embracing my black self made a significant change in my life. Not feeling myself or my circumstances are obstacles to overcome makes it easier to release self doubt when I hit a brick wall that I feel insurmountable.

Americans measure success with stuff and not character. And black Americans in particular have a long history of spending our way to acceptance. It seems no one has arrived unless they have the most stuff. I mean who sends their children to school each morning so that they can grow up and follow their dreams? No! We send our kids to school so they can get good jobs to get away from themselves because we see self at various stages of lack. When we meet obstacles that seem to prevent us from achieving our mission we sometimes go spiraling into the depths of despair. Or heaven forbid when we reach the plateau of the amount of stuff we feel we can get or maintain we feel this is the end. We rob ourselves and those around us of the main ingredient... The human spirit.